Saoirse wrote:
Especially if your name is Siobhán or Niamh....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcLOKQOpj7ULOL!
Sometimes you can't win for losing. In the wake of the Berkeley tragedy, I had my husband put the names of the students who died in the prayers of the people at church. Knowing how Americans struggle with Irish names, I carefully wrote out "Eimear" and "Eoghan" phonetically for English (EE-mur and Owen, respectively), so the reader, who had no knowledge of Irish whatsoever, would have a good chance of pronouncing the names more or less correctly. And she did a good job, too. Surprisingly, the only one she struggled with was not a Gaelic name (and one I thought that most Americans would have little trouble with): Niccolai. If I'd known as I do now that he went by "Nic" I'd have just put it in that way (or maybe "Nick," to be super safe).
Oh well. We have a long-time parishioner whose name is spelled "Joan Sinex" and is pronounced "jo-ANN SIH-nex" (cruel parents and unfortunate luck when it came to marital name*). The only people who ever get her name right in the prayers are the people who knew her from before. Everyone else says "jown SY-nex."
And we won't get started on the people who insist on calling me "Andrea" or "Ashley."
Redwolf
For those who may not know, there's a nasal congestion product available here called "Sinex", pronounced SY-nex (as in "sinus").
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